Recently, I promised to answer the question most asked by our clients: What does it mean for a trademark to be confusingly similar to another trademark? Well, I lied. The question that’s really most asked by our clients is, “It’s gonna cost me how much to name this thing?!”

But the likelihood-of-confusion question is interesting, too. In making that determination, the Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) employs the Polaroid Test (named after the famous case of Polaroid Corp v. Polarad Electronics Corp.), which looks at such factors as:

* Degree of similarity between the marks (visually, phonetically). Think Starbucks vs. Starbuxx. A difference in spelling is not enough to avoid confusion if the marks are phonetically identical.

* Marketplace proximity. Suave Shampoo and Suave Dating Service could happily co-exist, but Oscar Mayer Bacon and Oscar Fryer Bacon would be a problem.

* Likelihood that the prior owner will “bridge the gap” and enter the market of the subsequent owner (or vice-versa) — though this is not always easy to predict. Consider that Apple Computer is now being sued yet again by the Beatles’ label, Apple Records. I wonder if that has anything to do with the success of iTunes!

* Actual confusion between the marks. Have consumers already been misled? Proven confusion is of course a good indication of likelihood of confusion!

* Strength of the prior mark in question (the more distinctive the mark, the stronger it is). You’re safer using a mark that is similar to an existing weak mark than an existing strong mark. So, if you’re going to start an online bookstore, call it “Books, Books, and More Books,” rather than “L’Amazon.”

* Sophistication of the buyers. A really interesting criterion. Consider car buyers and potato-chip buyers. Because of the time and investment involved in buying a car, buyers are much more likely to make an educated, deliberate purchase, and less likely to be confused by similar brand names, than their chip-buying counterparts. Or so they say. If you’re anything like me, you’re pretty particular about your snacks.

Like most intellectual-property law, likelihood of confusion isn’t black and white. But, if you remember these criteria, you’re in much better shape than most. Good luck, and happy naming!

Tags: naming, Trademark
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BlackBerry, Apple, Macintosh - Some of the most successful product names and company names have unexpected roots.

How do you reconcile the tart sweetness of blackberries picked on a lazy summer afternoon with a multitasking cell phone? At first glance, product names and company names like BlackBerry and Apple have nothing to do with the companies or products they brand. So why do they work? Because strategic naming rarely requires a literal descriptive name. In fact, if you want to set a brand apart and make it fresh and memorable, an evocative name borrowed from another field is often far more powerful. Especially if you dig deep to create a name that’s rooted in the brand’s essence. Here are some rules for successfully “borrowing” a name from an unexpected source-in this case, the garden.

1. Make it relevant.

BlackBerry - At first blush, BlackBerry is just plain fun. Yet look closer, and the connection between RIM’s BlackBerry smartphone and its natural inspiration becomes clear…. The cluster of black keys on the phone is reminiscent of the blackberry fruit itself. On a subtler level, the name also suggests wholeness and life: a nice touch for a device designed to bring all of life’s activities together in one small device. And the moniker stands out amidst more formally named smartphones and similar devices because it’s so friendly sounding and emotionally engaging. Sweet.

2. Make it work for you on more than one level.

Apple - Apple’s unique company name - adopted in 1977, when food names for tech brands were virtually unheard of - shows how willing Apple has always been to “think different.” With five letters, this simple company name humanized a technology that was a scary black box to most people back then, and made it sound accessible and fun. It also went a long way towards establishing the brand as engaging, innovative and refreshingly user-friendly. (Just imagine if Apple had called itself Accessilon, for instance. One shudders to think.) And its allusion to the famous fruit of the tree of knowledge makes this company name a powerful metaphor for a brand that continues to open up a world of knowledge to ordinary mortals. The product name “Macintosh” (a type of apple) was a natural extension, pairing seamlessly with the mother brand.

3. Make it speak to what’s unique about your product or company.

Tealeaf Technology For a software technology that’s all about gaining insight into customers’ online experience - and foreseeing and managing future experiences - Tealeaf Technology is a disarmingly intuitive name. Here, digitally-enabled prescience is linked to a much older practice of gaining foresight and wisdom: reading the pattern of leaves in the bottom of a teacup. And the fact that the name evokes the tranquility of settling down with a hot cup of tea doesn’t hurt either. Small wonder the company has become the leader in online customer-experience management.

Bottom line? Don’t underestimate the power of the unexpected. As long as it helps tell your story, there’s no reason why a juicy fruit can’t be a cool cellphone, or a tea leaf an oracular website solution. In a desert of dry and abstract tech product names, it’s hard to resist the appeal of something truly tangible and alive.

Posted in Brand Naming, Branding, Catchword, Language use, Product Naming | 1 Comment

Here’s another excerpt from our handy dandy naming manual - it’s like a car manual, only about naming! We’ll be posting 10 different sections on a weekly basis, so please come back every Friday for more. If you like what you see, please download a copy of your very own, or write to us and we’ll mail you a paper copy (it has a glossy cover!).

CREATE YOUR NEW NAME
Creating your new name is both the most difficult and most exciting step of changing your flat name. To begin, locate your various naming devices, including your Onboard Naming Navigator, your Rear & Side-view Mirrors, your Creative Fuel-Injection System, your Anti-lock Naming System, and your Theft Prevention System.

Now, in exactly this order, here are the steps you should follow:

Step 1 - Locating Relevance
Step 2 - Avoiding Competition
Step 3 - Developing Names
Step 4 - Avoiding Pigeonholing
Step 5 - Distilling Names
Step 6 - Screening Names
Step 7 - Installing Name

NAMING TIP
Be clear about what makes you unique.
Choose a single point of distinction – not a laundry list.

Step 1 - Locating relevance
Use your Onboard Naming Navigator to locate relevance. Finding relevance may not be simple, and will require a deep understanding of your customers and what’s important to them. If you haven’t done so already, speak with your customers and have them answer the following questions:

• What is important to you about this product or service?
• Why would you choose one product or service over another in this space?
• In what ways are existing products or services deficient?
• How would you describe the ideal product or service?
• What product or service in this space best fits your needs and why?

Once you have answers to these questions, and a solid understanding of what is relevant to your customers, advance to the next step and use your Side & Rear-view Mirrors to locate and avoid your competitors.

Step 2 - Avoiding competition
Use your Side & Rear-view Mirrors to spot and avoid competitors. Make sure to use all available mirrors and be mindful of your blind spot – competitors have a tendency to get lost in heavy traffic conditions. Knowing where your competitors are and what sort of names they’re driving is imperative, not only to finding an available lane but hopefully to blazing your own trail and creating a truly distinctive brand name. Position your mirrors to answer the following questions:

• Which name constructs are your competitors using?
• What messages are being communicated by your competitors’ names?
• Is there an opportunity to communicate an altogether new message?
• Who’s got the flashiest name on the road? Is it getting any attention? Why?
• What names have already arrived at your customers’ hearts and minds?

Once you have located your competitors and understand their names you can begin to identify places to steer your name that competitors don’t occupy. While open lanes are often opportunities for immediate distinction, the clearest and most enduring path to customers’ hearts and minds is the trail you blaze yourself.

CAUTION/WARNING
To overtake your competition, you need to distinguish your brand from theirs. Don’t be afraid to be different.

Step 3 - Developing names
Now that you’ve found relevance and determined how to distinguish your name on the road, you can begin the process of actual name creation! To do so, start up your Creative Fuel Injection System (CFI). If your system is working properly you will begin to feel inspired. Creative ideas should start to flow and possible new names should begin to emerge. If new names don’t immediately emerge, make sure that your CFI is properly calibrated and running on the following creative pumps:

• Brainstorming sessions
• Free-association exercises
• Metaphor explorations
• Creative relay exercises
• Foreign language exploration
• Out-of-category inspirations
• Visual stimulants

Last week: How to Change a Flat Name
Next week: More techniques for name creation

Tags: brand name, naming guide, naming manual
Posted in Brand Naming, Branding, Catchword, Company Naming, Product Naming | 1 Comment

Farms can reap big dividends in profits and consumer loyalty with strategic naming.

Sierra Schlesinger smiles easily while selling two pounds of shelling beans at the farmers’ market in Berkeley, California. “People know us as the dirty girls - even Joe (the farmer) gets tagged as one although he bristles a little at that….They remember us,” she says. The farm gets its name from the original owners, two women who tried to call it Fan Tan Farm in 1995. Local farmers nicknamed them the “dirty girls” and the name stuck. Today Dirty Girl Produce and its Early Girl dry-farmed tomatoes have become legendary in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. “Sometimes people don’t even bother to look at the signs,” says Dirty Girl worker Steve Wright, “but they know what they’re looking for and ask you: ‘Are these the Dirty Girl tomatoes?’”

The recent movement to eat local and organic has people thinking a lot more about where their food is coming from and how it’s grown. And distinct, creative farm names help smaller farms differentiate their produce from that of their industrial agribusiness competitors (whose produce usually isn’t labeled in the supermarket). Agricultural brand naming also makes it easier for consumers to feel connected on a personal level with the people who grow their food, “putting a face” on what’s often seen merely as a commodity.

Bay Area farmers’ markets are a heaven of fruits and vegetables in summer, showcasing a kaleidoscope of luscious produce from farms along the state’s central coast. A walk down the line reveals some of the farms’ intriguing brand names: Ella Bella (named after the owner’s daughter, Ella), Full Belly (need we say more?), Blossom Bluff, Gospel Flat. And while the names may be branding products that are worlds away from commercialized big business, they follow principles of brand name creation that are familiar to those of us from professional naming firms. Unique company names like Frog Hollow Farm, (whose yellow peaches are indescribably delicious) and Flying Disc Ranch (where the fresh, soft dates are more delectable than fine caramel) suggest superior produce, grown with great care. They draw you in for a taste and make it easy to remember the brand later.

Such company names also pique your curiosity and make you want to know more about the farms themselves. And the farms are enthusiastic about sharing. The family that owns Gospel Flat Farm-named after the four churches that once stood on the property-regularly invites students from the nearby middle school to see sustainable agriculture in action. (Here the farm looks more like an enormous garden than an actual commercial farm, with organic crops thriving next to rows of flowers.)

Bottom line? People remember engaging names and when the produce is consistently good, they develop a fervent loyalty to those farm brands.

Tags: food naming, green naming, organic naming
Posted in Brand Naming, Branding, Product Naming | No Comments

Here’s another excerpt from our handy dandy naming manual - it’s like a car manual, only about naming! We’ll be posting 10 different sections on a weekly basis, so please come back every Friday for more. If you like what you see, please download a copy of your very own, or write to us and we’ll mail you a paper copy (it has a glossy cover!).

HOW TO CHANGE A FLAT NAME
Your vehicle is very sophisticated, and comes equipped with numerous devices for changing a flat name and creating a new one. Generally speaking, you will need to use all the following devices in order to safely remove and replace your flat name:

1. Onboard naming navigator (to help you find relevance)
2. Rear & Side-view mirrors (to spot and avoid your competition)
3. Creative fuel-injection system (to inspire truly great name ideas)
4. Anti-lock naming system (to avoid pigeonholing your new name)
5. Name exhaust system (for distilling out/expelling undesirable new names)
6. Theft prevention system (to protect your new name)

NAMING TIP
Involve all key stakeholders from beginning to end. If some senior decision makers can’t participate, arrange to have periodic meetings with them to update them on your shortlists, names you plan to screen, and final candidates.

ONBOARD NAMING NAVIGATOR
A brand name should be destined for your customers’ hearts and minds. To make sure you reach your destination, activate your Onboard Naming Navigator before embarking and set a course for relevance.

REAR & SIDE-VIEW MIRRORS
With ever-increasing competition, the naming roads have become incredibly congested in recent years. Fortunately, your marketing vehicle comes equipped with both Rear & Side-view mirrors for spotting and avoiding competitive brand names on the commercial roads. Feel free to glance in your mirrors as often as you like, but avoid changing lanes until you’ve activated your Onboard Naming Navigator and arrived at relevance.

CREATIVE FUEL-INJECTION SYSTEM (CFI)
Your Creative Fuel-Injection System supplies creative inspiration to the name development process. It is your creative workhorse, and the generator of all brainstorming exercises. CFIs are usually more powerful than carbureted systems, though it’s not necessary to monitor output since more creative is always better than less.

Last week: The Parts of Your Brand Name
Next week: Create Your New Name

Tags: brand name, naming guide, naming manual
Posted in Brand Naming, Branding, Catchword, Product Naming | 1 Comment

Using European languages to create product names and company names for American brands can be a powerful strategy or a serious misstep. Here’s when it works, and why.

What do Häagen-Dazs, Saint Benoît and Clinique have in common? Answer: they’re all successful European brand names for stuff manufactured right here in the good old U.S. of A. They’re also living proof that one of the most effective ways to telegraph luxury or premium quality is to use a product name or company name that’s derived from a European language. And even though many American consumers are hip to this trick by now, most don’t mind being seduced with a European come-on if the product lives up to its promise.

The vaguely Scandinavian brand name Häagen-Dazs was coined in 1959-by two Polish immigrants living in the Bronx-to lend Old World flair to their line of ice creams. Thestrategic naming worked, and the super-premium ice cream soared to success with its incorrectly placed umlaut. Similarly, the product name Clinique adds French cachet to a skincare and makeup line from Estée Lauder (itself a “Frenchified” version of Josephine Esther Lauder, one of the company’s founders). And on a smaller, local scale, Saint Benoît has created a nice little stir-and is commanding premium prices-with its small-batch, French-style yogurt, even though it’s “crafted” in Sonoma County, California.

Bottom line: when branding products for American audiences, foreign-sounding names can play off stereotypes of other nations and trigger associations we retain on a preconscious level. For instance, French product names can suggest luxury and premium quality; Italian product names, sexiness and high fashion (or at least great espresso); Scandinavian names, superior milk products and icy pure water and vodka; and German names, impeccable automotive engineering.

There’s only one catch with foreign branding: you have to make sure your products are in synch with, and can live up to, their European mystique. An ultra-rich ice cream like Häagen-Dazs can easily make good on the promise its name makes. (As can Saint Benoît’s creamy yogurt, developed by brothers who grew up in France, where simple local foods like hand-crafted yogurt are more of a tradition.) On the other hand, a mediocre ice cream with a fancy European product name will only come across as pretentious and silly.

Of course if you’re really, really clever, there’s even a place for ironic foreign branding that plays off the implicit pretension of certain foreign-sounding names. Witness the success of LeSportsac, the iconic American bag company whose bags are “proudly manufactured in the US.” Its tongue-in-cheek coined name blends Old World panache with New World street smarts, to suggest a brand that’s both chic and practical-and sophisticated in a hip kind of way. Which is, perhaps, the best of all worlds.

So could a European-sounding name be right for your brand? Before you proceed down this road ask yourself:

Here’s another excerpt from our handy dandy naming manual - it’s like a car manual, only about naming! We’ll be posting 10 different sections on a weekly basis, so please come back every Friday for more. If you like what you see, please download a copy of your very own, or write to us and we’ll mail you a paper copy (it has a glossy cover!).

THE PARTS OF YOUR BRAND NAME

CONSTRUCTION
The Construction is the body of your brand name, the shape it takes during manufacturing, including length and ease of pronunciation. While not quite as fortunate as our design brethren, name developers do have several Constructions to work with, including the real-word (e.g., Legend), the coined word (e.g., Camry), the composite word (e.g., Land Cruiser), and even alpha-numerics (e.g., A6). Domestic namers may also consider the non-English word a recognized construction (e.g., Paseo).

METAPHOR (AVAILABLE ONLY ON SELECT MODELS)
Not all brand names come equipped with a Metaphor, but many of the best vehicles possess one. The Metaphor is a symbolic representation of the Messaging, and it can be a real head-turner. It’s not always engineered into the vehicle because it does require a little more thought and naming expertise, but names equipped with Metaphor are often the most sophisticated and sturdy names on the road. Just some examples of names that come equipped with Metaphor are the Ford Mustang, the Honda Prelude, and the Chevy Corvette.

MESSAGING
The core idea or ideas communicated by your name. Not to be confused with the Metaphor (available on select models), the Messaging is usually the most important concept that your brand name conveys. Fast, Comfortable, Luxurious, Adventurous, Environmentally-Friendly, Quiet. These are all examples of Messaging communicated by numerous car brand names. Some brand names come equipped with very overt Messaging, such as the Toyota Comfort (interestingly, 90% of all taxis in Hong Kong are Toyota Comforts) while others boast more suggestive Messaging, such as the Honda Passport. Still others come standard with more abstract Messaging, such as the Volkswagen Touareg.

Next week: How to Change A Flat Name

Tags: brand name, naming guide, naming manual
Posted in Brand Naming, Branding, Catchword, Company Naming, Product Naming | 1 Comment

Those of us in the naming business have been looking for ROI data for an eternity. How can we justify the fees we charge if there’s no way to prove that changing the name actually impacts success? In a typical business name-change, there are too many extraneous factors that impact the success of a brand. The name might be great but the product sucks. Or the name is great but the marketing team sucks. (Of course, none of our clients suck, nor their products …)

Lo and behold, the Holy Grail of Naming comes to us from the sporting world, of all places. We now have a perfectly controlled experiment in which the same product, with two different names, has a yielded a dramatically different outcome.

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays were the worst team in the American League in 2007. During the off season, the team decided to change its name, dropping the “Devil” part and moving ahead as just the “Rays”. Admittedly, not the most dramatic name change in history, but we’ll take what we can get. So what happened? In 2008, the Tampa Bay Rays broke out of the losing funk the franchise had owned since their inception. They just clinched their first playoff birth (ever), and the team finished in the top three for the best record in all of baseball. Not bad for a team that did nothing else but change its name. How’s THAT for ROI?

It’s rare to observe a case study in which all other factors remain equal. For once it is undeniable - same players, same stadium and the same coaches and managers as the preceding year. Even the same competition. A complete turnaround fueled solely by the power of a name.

Objectively, we have to say that the new name is much better. Dropping the slightly lugubrious “Devil” makes a big difference. It’s snappier, and more in line with the classic “Mets” or “Cubs”. The rhyme isn’t too shabby either; the new name follows many of  rules we naming specialists apply: it rolls of the tongue, it’s fun, and it’s distinctive. Most importantly, it is less blasphemous. (KIDDING!) 

So here’s to the Tampa Bay Rays and their hopes of making the World Series after this record-breaking year. Take that new name and run with it!

And to all you other folks out there who want to turn things around, just look at the Rays. For immediate success, turn to your local naming company. We’re here to help.

Tags: baseball naming, naming ROI, sports naming, sports team naming
Posted in Brand Naming, Branding, Fun stuff, In-the-News | No Comments

And in financial news today, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 237 points as bargain hunters scooped up ailing stocks following yesterday’s 777 point freefall. Despite the modest snapback, Senator Skoultchi from New York is still aggressively pushing his proposal to rename the index the Down Jonezing industrial average, at least until such time as lawmakers can get their heads out of their Aston Martins and agree on a plan to resuscitate the economy.

Senator Skoultchi acknowledged that he knows virtually nothing about economics or finance (and, quite shockingly, that he’s not even a Senator), but that the renaming makes sense because Americans demand transparency from our political and financial leaders. Never known for his oratory skills, Skoultchi was quoted as saying “Holy crap – did you see what happened in the market yesterday?! They oughta rename that index the Down Jonezing industrial average.”

He went on to say that prior to becoming a fake senator, he worked for many years as a name development specialist at a brand name development firm named Catchword, and that in all his years of consulting for Catchword he had never seen an easier target than the words “Dow” and “Jones” for a market index that was spiraling ever downward and in desperate need of a cash fix.

“I mean, c’mon, it couldn’t be any easier if the index was named the “Halp Mead industrial average. Alright, that’s not the best, but you get the point.” he was quoted as saying.

Tags: bank naming, economic naming, finance naming, financial naming
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It turns out that it’s not as simple as translating your product branding into the language of the place where you’re going to sell the thing. A recent study published in the Journal of Consumer Research tested the effectiveness of marketing for different products with college students in New Delhi. Packaging copy was written in English, Hindi and mixtures thereof for chocolate and laundry detergent. This brief article in the NY Times covers the highlights of the study’s findings. It seemed that the students preferred English or an English-rich hybrid for chocolate while Hindi or a Hind-rich mixture for laundry detergent. Aradhna Krishna, the study’s author, attributed this the fact that English is associated with global and cosmopolitan upper class, while Hindi (probably the language spoken at home) is associated with inclusion and family.

Interestingly, products that were marketed by multinational companies with all-Hindi packaging copy were viewed poorly. Professor Krishna explains, “It backfires. It’s like, ‘Who is this guy using Hindi?’”

Tags: Advertising, Brand Naming, In-the-News, Product Naming
Posted in Advertising, Brand Naming, Branding, In-the-News, Product Naming | No Comments